


Up Some Nights

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7061497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The idea of heroes, or maybe just of Junkrat, keeps Roadhog up some nights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up Some Nights

**Author's Note:**

> First Overwatch fic, go easy on me. 
> 
> This is sort of shippy, if you want to take it that way I don't really mind.

It’s a little like babysitting, but that’s putting it in kiddie terms, and kiddies they most certainly are not.

Mostly it’s the way ‘Rat scurries along in front of him that does it; he must always be on the cusp of stepping in, of defending or protecting or just getting between the smaller man and danger, an underpaid minder tagging along in Jamie’s death-seeking little fun trip.

Junkrat is a good name for the broken, wiry whip of a man; he hordes garbage like a trash-yard rodent, constantly in motion, eyes gleaming as he twitches something together from nothing. His traps are, surprisingly, little bits of genius, and Roadhog doesn’t know yet if he likes it or hates it. It’s a juxtaposition roughly as large as the difference in size between the two of them, that this madman should be so clever.

Roadhog knows all about heroes.

He’s read about them in books growing up. Seen them in action, gallantly striding forth to their deaths, only to be buried, pathetically, in mass graves at the edges of battlefields, nothing but a medal and a trembling song for their funeral rights.

There was a time when he was more than this, when he had a vested interest in being something defined and whole and good. When heroes meant something to him. He’s seen them in the pictures, the legends, in the flesh—altogether, he knows, he’s seen too many heroes. And he knows about them all. He’s turned the pages, looked up the names, until his head was so crammed with the history of these ancient (and recent, yes, them too) soldiers that it feels as though he’s cheated in some manner, denied them their humanity.

He knows, though, about heroes; how they always die in the end.

Christ, and yes, that’s what this is like, it’s like being some chronicler charting the developing path of some death-bound fool.

‘Rat is no hero, no more than Roadhog himself is. But it’s _like_ that, and Roadhog knows it’s the nature of heroes to sacrifice when they burn themselves out.

And ain’t that just what Junkrat, Jamison Fawkes that was; ain’t that just what he’s out there doing? Burning himself out, not to anybody’s betterment (not even his own), but just for the sake of it. A hero in his own deranged right.

They’re not friends, not really. Friendship is soft and giving and sweet. They’re tough and sharp as desert glass and about as kind.

Still there’s something. A kind of support Roadhog doesn’t want to give up.

Strange and weird and bittersweet, it keeps him up some nights.


End file.
